


Coda: Après le déluge

by lilithilien



Series: Alchemy in Quarter Time [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adult Draco Malfoy, Adult Harry Potter, M/M, POV Draco Malfoy, Pining, Post-Hogwarts, Potions Shop Owner Draco Malfoy, but the muses weren't cooperating, there was supposed to be smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:20:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26241031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithilien/pseuds/lilithilien
Summary: One moment, you're happily minding your own business, running your own potions shop and definitely not hiding out from the demons of your past. The next moment, one of those self-same demons apparates right into your showroom, with no notice or invitation, wearing that ridiculous grin and dripping rainwater all over your expensive Persian rug.After many years, Potter tracks Malfoy down.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: Alchemy in Quarter Time [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906159
Comments: 12
Kudos: 89





	Coda: Après le déluge

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes off from the end of [Alchemy in Quarter Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/202668). It's not essential that you read that first, but it does explain how Draco's gotten to where he is and the nature of their relationship.

"One moment," thinks Draco, "you're happily minding your own business, running your own shop in a beautiful city where you definitely aren't hiding out from the demons of your past. The next moment, one of those self-same demons apparates right into your showroom, with no notice or invitation, wearing that ridiculous grin and dripping rainwater all over your expensive Persian rug."

Draco's shock wars with his exasperation, but the latter wins, and he casts a quick drying charm in the man's direction.

The charm works on everything but Potter's glasses, which fog up in the warm room. They're a new pair, Draco notices, although still that unflattering round shape. He looks away when Harry slips them off to clean. He doesn't need a refresher on how naked that face looks without the filter of wire frames. 

"What are you doing here, Potter?"

The bastard grins with that cockiness that Draco remembers well, the one he only lets show when he isn't drowning in morbid thoughts of his destiny. "Just enjoying the sights. I believe Toledo might be the most beautiful city I've ever seen." 

"And a Spanish potions house is on your itinerary?"

But Potter's already won Almudena's loyalty with his praise for her hometown. "Señor, you must show him _el catedral_. It is almost at the time when you like to go."

Draco glares at his treasonous assistant, but it's too late. Potter already smells victory. "I'd love to see it! Will you show me?"

He could simply claim that work demands his time, but reversing the flow of the Tagus is easier than deterring Potter. His unwelcome guest would no doubt stand dripping on the carpets all night and still be here to charm Almudena in the morning. Best to get him alone so Draco can send him back to England without interference.

"Fine, but hurry." 

He shrugs off his work robes and takes his cloak from the peg, one hand already reaching for the door while the other pulls up the heavy hood. The storm rages outside. Even with his water repelling charm Draco feels the raindrops beat down, their erratic rhythm echoing his pounding heart. He'd done so well to disappear, only his parents knew how to find him, and they would never have told Potter. He can't imagine why the man is here.

Draco sets a quick pace as they traverse the old city wall, their path rising as the river below surges downstream. He doesn't look back, doesn't wait for the other man, but he senses him scurrying alongside. 

"So this is where you live?" pants Harry. 

They obviously aren't walking fast enough if Potter can still manage to talk. Draco speeds up a notch, grateful for his strong muscles hewn from years of climbing these steep corridors. "This is where I live," he replies with ease. As a boy he played on the banks of the River Wylye where it crossed the manor grounds. Now he's replaced those smooth river stones with slick cobblestones, the high, mossy banks with Caliphal mosques and Visigoth churches. The currents of history wash endlessly down this _calle_ , the acts of a single man meaningless unless he inscribes his life in stone. It's no wonder that Draco loves it.

And now Potter is here. Bursting in uninvited, unannounced, with all the grace of a hurricane. Acting as if Draco should be happy to see him. As if Draco had not spent the last four years building a life wonderfully devoid of all things Potter. He turns to glare at his unwelcome companion but finds the man almost running to keep up, his head bowed, with that useless Muggle contrivance - an umbrella, did he call it? - whipping in the wind like a caged bat. Draco can't help but pity him. As he shortens his stride, he tells himself it's the same as he would feel for any poor creature out in this storm.

Another dozen steps and the narrow road streams into a wide plaza. So much water has pooled here that it resembles a great grey lake. The Cathedral rises like a ship before them, its bow the domed Mudéjar chapel and the towering tiara of a spire its aft. "Wow!" commends Harry in his inelegant way, and Draco has to agree.

In the Cathedral's main façade three doors representing different fates beckon to penitents. Draco prefers the door on the left, _Puerto del Infierno_ , less because he imagines Hell to be his fate than because of its refreshing absence of macabre figures. For some unbeknownst reason these were reserved for the far-right door, the Door of Judgment, where anguished souls await condemnation for their sins. With Potter in tow, Draco thinks he knows how they feel. 

He starts in that direction when he notices Potter has edged ahead of him. Harry sloshes through the plaza like he's walking on water (Draco is pleased to note he's traded his ratty trainers for real boots), headed straight for the centre door. _Puerta del Perdón_ , the Door of Forgiveness. Draco dismisses the notion that he understands the implication of that choice, putting it down instead to Potter's presumption that the biggest, widest door must certainly be the one to take. 

Stepping into the magnificent chapel pushes thoughts of his philistine companion aside. Eighty-eight marble pillars lift his eye to the cusped arches lit by hundreds of stained-glass windows, their colours smoky from the storm clouds shining through. He moves reverentially under the interlaced vaults, filling his lungs with the cloying scent of incense that never quite vanishes, letting the same tranquillity wash over him that he felt when he first crossed this threshold nearly four years ago. He might not share the beliefs on which this place was built, but Draco cannot deny that it is a holy place, any more than its Muggle worshippers can deny that it possesses magic. 

Like a bauble-hungry raven, Potter starts for the gilded retable at the far end of the chapel, and Draco gladly watches him go. The high altar looks far too much like a goblin's carnal desire, and the thought of orgasmic goblins is not one he cares to entertain. Instead he wanders the maze of minor chapels where royal corpses find eternal sleep under elaborate Gothic friezes and, in the Chapel of Saint Eugene, an endless Arabic inscription.

"This one's different."

Draco hadn't noticed that he was being followed. It's been a while since that happened; he reproves himself silently for the slip while covering his surprise with a sharp nod. "It's one of the oldest chapels, dating back to the thirteenth century. You see this Moorish geometric style more in southern Spain, but it is preserved here remarkably well."

"I like it."

Draco smiles in spite of himself. It's so uncomplicated, Potter's pronouncement. He had forgotten that about Harry, how he was so straightforward, never any subterfuge or duplicity. What you saw was what you got. "I like it, too," he answers in kind.

Harry smiles back. He stands before the royal tomb, but instead of looking at the long-dead Bailiff of Toledo his eyes are fixed on Draco. "I've been looking for you for years."

And this is why he hates straightforward. "That should have told you I didn't want to be found," Draco snaps.

"Don't you want to know how I found you?"

"Not it if delays your departure."

Draco refuses to look at Potter, his eyes instead intently studying the unbroken Arabic scroll. _"To the Virgin Mary, the mother of God,"_ endlessly looping in monotonous repetition. He sees the attraction of such a prayer, words unvarying washing like unyielding waves over your consciousness. _"Go away, Potter, go back to England"_ should have a similar effect. The gods are merciless, though, and Potter remains.

"I figured you'd be working with potions, since you were so good at it," he says as if Draco had asked. "I spent the whole of my repeat year at Hogwarts tracking down every potions maker in England. But nobody knew where you might be -- you just disappeared into thin air!"

"Maybe you should try it sometime." 

Potter, the bastard, just smiles. Draco ignores him and raises his eyes to loftier things. _Mocárabes_ burst forth from the cornices on the two columns, infinite numbers of honeycombed plasterwork, and Draco sets out to count them. It's something he should know, he tells himself, like the fact that the eighty-eight columns in the presbyterium are lit by more than 750 stained glass windows, and there are 15 El Grecos in the sachristy. Someday he might play tour guide for someone he wants to be there, although at the moment he can't imagine who that might be.

"Then I started in on the European shops. I didn't think you'd have gone to America, and I wasn't sure how to find you there anyway. Hermione says half their stores are on the Internet."

Draco doesn't want to admit he's not sure where the Internet is, especially if it's a large enough place to house all of America's potions makers. _Especially_ if it's something the Mudblood's familiar with. _Mudblood_. The word, unused in this mongrel city, seeps too easily from the recesses of his brain. He swallows the foul taste it leaves and picks up his count where he left off.

"So I started ordering potions, since I figured that just asking around wouldn't work if you really didn't want to be found. Now I've got a closet full of Pepperup alone. I was thinking I should donate it to a Quidditch team. Do you still follow Falmouth? I might see if they could use it …"

Potter is babbling. Potter only babbles when he's off-centre, and Draco is pleased that the tide is turning. 

"Why are you here?"

"Because I found you." As if that explained everything. "After all these years, I recognised your handwriting on a vial of Living Death." 

He shrugs then, and looks a shade embarrassed. "Ginny says I'm obsessed."

It was one thing for Potter to show up uninvited and enlist him as an impromptu tour guide. It was quite another to dredge up faces happily forgotten. Draco's last remembrance of Hogwarts was just after the battle. Harry's fans rallied around him, a stream of joyous victors circling endlessly. At one point, Draco found himself caught up in the flow, drawn dangerously close to the edge of the eddy. But between him and Potter lay his ubiquitous sidekicks and the Weaselette, watchful as Cerberus and just as fierce as Draco tried to move closer. It's Girl Weasley's face he remembers most vividly, her pointed wand reminding him that the war for Harry Potter hadn't ended. 

It had ended, for Draco at least. He'd retreated, leaving Potter to seek that mother-figure he'd always craved, the one he'd so obviously found in Ginny. _The Prophet_ hailed it as the great romance of the century, childhood sweethearts and comrades in arms. Not that Draco read the society pages. If he more than glanced at them it was only because there was precious little else to read in English. But on those rare occasions that he did, he had noticed an unhealthy focus on the question of when Potter might propose.

"Really, Potter, best not upset your better half."

"I'm not with Ginny. We let the press think we are. It's easier that way." Takes Draco's hand.

Draco swallows hard. 

"So … how did you find me?"

"I saw your ad in _The Prophet_. It was worded too perfectly to be a Spanish owner. When I got the draughts you'd labelled, I knew."

Draco looks at his hand that had written those labels, the hand that has betrayed him. That is betraying him even now by not pulling out of Potter's grip.

"What is it you want?"

Potter's smile is enigmatic. "See, that's just it. It's never been about what I wanted. Or what you've wanted. That's why I've been looking for you. The way I see it, we've never had a fair chance, you and me."

Draco tries to swallow, his throat suddenly gone dry. "I've changed."

"So have I. Will you trust me? Just this once?"

Draco attempts to say no, but his treacherous hand clutches Harry, just like it has wanted to do for years. He nods, and Harry transports them away.

They materialize on the high wall of the city. The Tagus crashes below them, roiling with the recent rains, alight with the shimmering sunlight that now blankets the hillside. 

And Harry hasn't let go of his hand. "I've missed you," he says. His other hand stretches out to touch Draco's cheek, to hold him close as he searches his face. "My whole life, it seems I've missed you. If you really want me to leave, I will, but I had to tell you that."

Draco opens his mouth - _"Go away, Potter, go back to England"_ \- but he can't make the words come out. Potter and his stupid declarations, his stupid sincerity, his stupid faith that their past meant something, might mean something still, might mean everything, now that everything is gone.

"Fuck you, Potter," Draco snarls, his body crushing into Potter's. He feels more solid, no longer the wiry kid Draco remembers, but the force of Draco's lunge is still enough to knock him off balance. Harry hits the wall with a loud "oomph" but recovers quickly, capturing Draco's mouth in a fierce kiss. He gropes for Draco as if he's famished, and Draco wonders how the hero of the wizarding world can be as starved for this as he is - because he is, he realises now. He's been wasting away without hearing Harry's needy whimpers, without feeling his fumbling fingers unzipping his trousers, without having his palm curled around his length like a perfectly sized glove. "Fuck you," Draco growls again, this time full of need. 

And Potter, the bastard, grins at him, his green eyes brimming with promise.

If anyone were to brave the slick steps of the city wall that day, they would have seen the city with its red-tiled houses stacked like matchboxes on the hill, and the vast plains of La Mancha spreading out below. And seeing two figures caught in a moment of intimacy against that wall, they would have turned away, unaware that they had just witnessed an elemental shift in both men's worlds.


End file.
